Obama's fast-track trade bill passes House in second attempt

President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi leave a House meeting room last week.

(Bloomberg) — The U.S. House passed President Barack Obama's fast-track trade bill, one of the president's top second-term priorities, with mostly Republican votes a week after a Democratic rebellion almost killed the proposal.

The 218-208 House vote Thursday returns the measure to the Senate, which also voted for it last month. Obama wants the expedited trade negotiating authority to help his administration complete a 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Twenty-eight Democrats, including Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Terri Sewell of Alabama, voted for the measure. And 50 Republicans, including Representatives Chris Collins of New York and Daniel Webster of Florida, voted against it.

“This is a vote for a stronger economy and higher wages. This is a vote for our system of free enterprise. This is a vote for American leadership,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, on the floor before the vote.

The measure would let Obama submit trade agreements to Congress for an expedited, up-or-down vote without amendments. It would give the authority to Obama and the next president for six years as part of a package that revamps U.S. trade policy into the next decade.

In an unusual alliance, most Republicans supported Obama's argument that the fast-track measure, known as trade promotion authority, would benefit the U.S. economy. Most Democrats joined with labor unions in blaming free-trade agreements for a decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs.

'BLANK CHECK'

“When you vote for TPA under these circumstances what we are saying to the administration is this is a blank check,” said Sander Levin, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.

Obama and lawmakers who support the fast-track measure won passage by separating it from a worker-assistance plan that had been added to gain Democratic support. Instead, Democrats on June 12 used a vote against the worker-aid program to block the entire bill.

Lawmakers plan to vote separately on extending the program that aids workers who lose their jobs because of trade agreements. It will be attached to a third trade proposal, H.R. 1295, granting preferences to poorer countries, said House Democrat Ron Kind of Wisconsin.

The fast-track provision was added to a popular public- safety retirement bill, H.R. 2146, that passed the House 407-5 on May 12 and the Senate by voice vote on June 4. It now returns to the Senate for a final vote before it can be sent to Obama for his signature.

McConnell, Boehner

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised in a joint statement Wednesday that both measures would be passed.

“We are committed to ensuring both TPA and TAA get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the president for signature,” they said. TAA is the worker-assistance program.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said the Senate doesn't plan to complete action on the trade agenda this week.

Obama went to the Capitol on June 12 to plead for Democratic support for the fast-track bill just hours before that vote, and he met Wednesday at the White House with a group of House Democrats who back the plan. Other top government officials including Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew also lobbied for the expedited negotiating authority.

The president's spokesman, Josh Earnest, said Wednesday that Obama will insist on passage of the worker-assistance plan along with fast track.

'Only' Strategy

“The only legislative strategy that the president will support is a strategy that results” in both the fast-track and worker-aid measures reaching Obama's desk, Earnest said. Such a strategy “will require the support of Democrats in both the House and the Senate,” he said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, led the June 12 rebellion by members of the president's party.

Although Democrats support the worker assistance program, they joined together to defeat it because that kept the trade package from going to Obama for his signature. The move was worth it even though $450 million in aid for workers would be lost, some lawmakers said.

“There are plenty of those who feel that's not such a bad price to pay for saving American jobs,” Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said last week.

Democrats obtained an agreement from Republicans to cancel plans to finance some of the worker assistance by cutting about $700 million from Medicare.

Republicans also faced opposition to the trade package within their own ranks from members who wouldn't vote for anything strengthening Obama's hand in international negotiations.